I remember the first time the alarm went off. The students actually got up from their chairs though there was some confusion. Was this real, a fire drill or a faulty alarm? Before anyone exited the building, a staff member came in the cafeteria and said it was a false alarm. We returned to our seats.

Jeanette Isabelle

_________________________
"A grain of wheat must fall to the ground before it can do any good. New life springs from fallen grain." -- Fleda Claes Johansson

Reminds me of a situation in college. In the building with the cafeteria, there was a period of time in which there were false alarms all the time. It got to the point the students didn't even flinch. They kept on eating.

BTDT Alarm went off, didn't see/smell smoke, went back to eating. Turned out some joker pulled the alarm for a prank. At the time, knee was messed up and I wasn't going anywhere I didn't have to, fast or slow.

The first thing when entering the room is to clear it with gun in hand.

Is the personal security situation in the USA that bad where people have to use a gun to enter a hotel room? If this indeed the case and considered normal behavior then I would be a lot more worried about being shot then the hotel catching on fire.

Unfortunately, the 'personal security situation' in USA hotel rooms is hard to know when one is traveling in 'Terra Incognita.' Although most hotels these days use a computer-enabled card to enter the room, I prefer to see for myself. Colonel Jeff Cooper had rules for safe gun handling. The first was: "ASSUME THAT ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED. The only exception to this occurs when one has a weapon in his hands and has personally checked its condition. As soon as he puts it down, Rule 1 applies again."

I apply this rule to my stays in any hotel/motel.

Granted, the chances of being involved in a fire are much more likely than in encountering a miscreant. Nevertheless, I would much rather have a gun and not need it, than . . . (you know the rest).

"Was this real, a fire drill or a faulty alarm? Before anyone exited the building, a staff member came in the cafeteria and said it was a false alarm"

During 9/11 when the first Tower was hit by the airplane, an evacuation of the second tower was ordered. People in all floors responded, but especially the upper floors. They began descending the stairwells. After a few minutes, a voice came over the loudspeakers in the second Tower telling everyone NOT to panic and return to their jobs. "The problem was confined to the first Tower, there was no need for panic or evacuation, and everyone should return to their desks and carry on working".

Many people responded ... and returned to their jobs on the upper floors of the second Tower.

ALL those people died. You know what happened. Another airplane hit the second Tower.

How do I know this?

I know someone who worked above the 100'th floor of the 2'nd Tower. That person IGNORED the instructions to abandon the evacuation and they continued down to the ground ... down the stairwell. They ONLY JUST made it out of the building. But they did make it.

Personally, I wouldn't rely on some random worker announcing that a fire alarm was false. This has happened, and has cost lives, in several major structure fires. Unless the announcement comes from responding firefighters, I'd rather at least check things out for myself than not evacuate promptly, and the higher the floor I'm on or the bigger the building I'm in, the more seriously I take fire alarms.

In hotels, counting doors both ways to hotel exits and checking access to stairwells and locations of fireboxes and extinguishers is an excellent idea. Loss of visibility and orientation due to smoke, and perhaps power failure, typically happens before heat or flame would make evacuation untenable. But I habitually note exit locations wherever I go anyway.

I also pull a chair or something up next to my bed and drape my clothes with pockets still loaded with wallet, flashlight, keys, etc., ready to quickly don or at least grab on my way out. As a retired firefighter and paramedic, I can still get redressed VERY quickly!

In my family we have a standing rule when checking into a hotel/motel with inside-opening room doors (as opposed to doors that open directly to the outside parking lot) -

The first thing when entering the room is to clear it with gun in hand.

That's what I do when I check into the executive suite at Mandarin Oriental.

Seriously, why is a "inside-opening" room more dangerous than an "outside-opening" room? I'd think it's the other way -- the former requires the bad guy to pass through the lobby either to or from the room. "Outside-opening" rooms offer direct access, and some corners of the parking lot may be poorly monitored. Such hotels also tend to be much cheaper, less patrolled, with a more problematic clientele.

Personally, I wouldn't rely on some random worker announcing that a fire alarm was false. This has happened, and has cost lives, in several major structure fires. Unless the announcement comes from responding firefighters, I'd rather at least check things out for myself than not evacuate promptly, and the higher the floor I'm on or the bigger the building I'm in, the more seriously I take fire alarms.

If I were waiting for a responding firefighter, I would still be outside waiting.

The cafeteria is on the first floor and there is a set of doors directly to the outside. If we have seen or smelled smoke nonetheless, we would have made our way out those doors.

Jeanette Isabelle

_________________________
"A grain of wheat must fall to the ground before it can do any good. New life springs from fallen grain." -- Fleda Claes Johansson

In my family we have a standing rule when checking into a hotel/motel with inside-opening room doors (as opposed to doors that open directly to the outside parking lot) -

The first thing when entering the room is to clear it with gun in hand.

That's what I do when I check into the executive suite at Mandarin Oriental.

Seriously, why is a "inside-opening" room more dangerous than an "outside-opening" room? I'd think it's the other way -- the former requires the bad guy to pass through the lobby either to or from the room. "Outside-opening" rooms offer direct access, and some corners of the parking lot may be poorly monitored. Such hotels also tend to be much cheaper, less patrolled, with a more problematic clientele.

A good result, but I wasn't surprised. I saw the incident on the News early. I could see that the fire only affected one corner of the building, and there was sure to be a clear path to evacuate on the other side. I didn't expect anyone to die from it. The journalists were wondering about terrorism, but modern terrorists would have set multiple fires to block all exits.

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